Friday, 4 April 2014

1 Week Today

One week today Avalon will be put on a truck to be transported to Nieuwpoort Belgium to start our European tour. This was the whole reason Avalon was conceived and built. If you have come to this blog without seeing the build blog, here it is.This is the road route, but there will be some deviation because Avalon will be left on the truck over the weekend because the crane company has no driver on a Monday?

It's only about 250 miles but a world away

Avalon will be delivered to Nieuwpoort on 15th April and we have a crane (travel hoist) booked for 10.30-12.00 midday.

This is a typical travel hoist

So what happens next? Well the plan has always been to have no plan. The European waterways are our oyster.

So keep watching and become a follower.

Initially we will be traveling with our friends Jill and Graham, fellow boaters in their narrowboat Matilda Rose. They have set up another blog for their European adventure.

Congratulations on starting your European Waterways Tour it all looks awesome. We currently live aboard our widebeam and are planning on doing a very similar plan to yourselves in about 2 years time so will be following your blog with interest (and envy!;-) If possible I've a couple of questions about paperwork/documents required to move the boat from the UK to Europe (we're planning to launch in France but I guess it will be similar paperwork to Belgium).

So pleased that it's all worked out so well for you. Must be really exciting!

Thanks for following on. my wife is also doing a blog but from a different perspective so have a look on my blog for Avalon Afloat.

I cant speag for France but now we are in Belgium we can pass into France. The Belgium harbor police met us at the crane. Because we arrived for UK which is not a Shengen country we had to do a small amount of paperwork. That was it.

That's good to know that the paperwork isn't too bad thanks. I've read your latest posts and it sounds like you're having an awesome time. The pictures are great to see as well.

We've now set our date (Sep 2016) to ship our WB to France and start living the dream so have now started counting the days. I'm about to fit solar panels and a solar hot water system on our WB so that we can reduce our diesel costs as much as possible when we are in France.

Have you a plan for the end of the year to finish up at specific marina/mooring for the winter period? Or are you going to sort that during the Summer depending upon where takes your fancy?

Please keep posting as often as you can as we are currently living our lives vicariously through your blog (for another 849 days!!!)

I like the idea of solar hot water. I am just worried about the fragility of evacuated tubes on a boat roof. I did consider it but decided not. I'm not sure what sort of other heating you are considering. If its diesel please don't make the mistake I made and put in a Mikuni / Ebberspatcher / Webasto type heater. The Hurricane I put in is far superior.

Will you be doing a blog on your build? Any assistance / advice I can give please ask.

Thanks for the offer of your help, I really appreciate it and may well pick your brains on a few things if that's ok. I didn't like the idea of vacuum tubes on the roof either so when I spoke to the specialists they suggested the Fino Panel which doesn't rely on vacuum tubes at all. It's also a lot smaller than the tubes so fits better on the roof and can be fitted horizontally rather than needing to be inclined. I've bought one panel which I'm fitting next week and it will apparently heat the 60 litre solar tank in a few hours. As for the current heating, both Winters we've had on board have been heated by the multi fuel stove which has done a great job. We bought the boat new but as an ex-demonstrator it was already fitted with a Webasto. However, it heats the water tank really well and we just don't use it to heat the radiators at all.

As for a blog, I've been keeping one since we first started working towards our plan some 3 years ago now. I think clicking on my name at the top of this comment should link to the blog.

I'll let you know how the solar fitting goes next week and put some pics on my blog of it as well.